The moment Madison woke up from sleep, she knew something was wrong. She looked at her hands and thought to herself, “Oh my God, I must be sick because these hands look very wrinkly!”

She quickly jumped out of bed and almost slipped on the floor.

“What was that?” she burst out.

Madison looked down and saw the culprit, her own floor-length nightgown.

“Wait. I wasn’t wearing a nightgown!” she thought.

Madison rushed to her vanity mirror… bam! She stubbed her toe on a wooden coffee table.

“What is Mindy’s coffee table doing in my room?” she wondered.

And then it hit her. She wasn’t in her room. She was in her older sister’s.

She turned to the mirror and screamed.

“That’s not me! That’s Mindy! But why it is the reflection of Mindy in the mirror instead of me? Where’s Mindy? Where’s the real me?” several thoughts ran her mind and she felt dizzy.

Panicking, she ran out of the room and toward her own. Just as she turned the corner, she saw her twin brothers tying something to her door, probably planning a prank.

“Get out of the way, you two!” she yelled.

David and Daniel jumped at the sound of her voice.

“Oh, Mindy, you also stay out of our way, we were just playing with Madison.”

“Oh yeah?” Madison snapped. “Get to your rooms now, and I’ll deal with you later!”

Confused as to why Mindy was up so early, the twins scurried away.

Madison took a deep breath and opened the door to her room. No one was there.

She searched the entire house, but everything was normal, her parents were probably at the grocery store, and her brothers were in their room now.

Then, she heard a snore. She walked back into her room and saw Mindy, sleeping there, on the floor.

“Mindy!” she hissed, shaking her. “Wake up! It’s an emergency!”

“Don’t bother me, Madison. I’m too tired,” Mindy mumbled.

“You really need to see this! It’ll make you go crazy!” Madison said in frantic tone.

Mindy groggily opened an eye. The moment she saw herself standing in front of her, she screamed.

“Ahhhhh! Who are you?” Mindy shouted with fear.

“Listen, Mindy! I think we have switched bodies! Get up!”

Mindy shot upright and rushed to the mirror. She started pinching herself.

“Wake up, wake up! This is just a dream!” Mindy helplessly tried to wake herself up from this nightmare.

“I don’t think so,” Madison said grimly.

Mindy whirled around. “What did you do, Madison?! Tell me what you’ve done!”

“My dear, I am as puzzled as you are. And I have no idea how this happened!”

Just then, the doorbell rang. Certain it was their parents, the two girls sprinted downstairs, both talking over each other, yelling about their predicament.

Once inside, their parents stared, bewildered.

“Girls! Calm down! What’s the matter?” their father asked.

“She did something to me!” Mindy still felt uncertain about her sister. “And now she’s in my body, and I’m in hers!”

“What! What are you talking about?” their mother said while putting the grocery bags on the kitchen counter.

“I did not do anything, mum!” Madison stomped. “I have no idea how this happened either!”

“Girls,” their mother said firmly, “Stop joking. Relax yourselves, there must be some argument between you two lately, I guess. Calm down, we will sort that out.”

“No, Mum! We’re serious!” Mindy insisted. “Remember when we went shopping, and you bought me a doughnut, but told me not to tell Madison because you ran out of money?”

Madison’s jaw dropped. “Wait, what? You got her a doughnut?!”

“Forget about that, Maddy! Focus!” Mindy turned to her. “Tell them something only you would know.”

Madison thought hard. “Oh! Remember when Dad took me out to buy roller skates? He almost hit a tree and told me not to tell Mum!”

Their mum glared at their dad, who suddenly found the floor very interesting. And then there were more of such mentions by the sisters that only one of them knew of. Slowly, realisation dawned on their parents.

“I don’t want to believe it, but it does seem that you two really have switched bodies,” Dad said in a very serious tone.

The girls nodded.

“And the twins? Are the boys okay?” Mum asked.

“Yes,” Mindy confirmed. “It’s just us.”

Both parents sighed. “Well, you girls need to get to school. We’ll figure this out when you come back.”

“But we’ve switched bodies! And that means I’ll have to go to Mindy’s class! And that would be super weird!” Madison cried.

“And I definitely don’t want to be in her class,” Mindy groaned. “Her teachers are so strict.”

“But what excuse do we give for your absence, girls?” their father asked. “That you switched bodies?”

The girls groaned, but had no choice. They got dressed with some difficulty, since they had to actually dress someone else’s body and barely made it to the bus in time.

At school, Madison avoided Mindy’s friends and rushed to class.

“Everyone, please hand in your assignments,” the teacher announced.

Madison froze. ‘What assignment? Did Mindy even do it?’ she thought and rummaged through her bag.

“Mindy,” someone hissed.

She turned to see Juliana, Mindy’s best friend, handing her a paper.

“You left yours in my book yesterday,” Juliana whispered.

“Oh… thank you,” Madison whispered back, relieved.

The rest of the day was weird. She dodged conversations and avoided attention. She also learnt how much her teachers adored Mindy, which only made her worry about what Mindy was doing in her classes.

“I hope she doesn’t ruin anything for me,” Madison prayed.

Finally, the school ended. Madison ran to the bus and found Mindy waiting.

“How’d it go?”

“So weird. You?”

“You didn’t tell me you had an English quiz!” Mindy huffed. “You’re lucky I knew what to write.”

Madison giggled. “Thanks, sis!”

“And I finished all your incomplete classwork.” They laughed and shared stories all the way home.

In the evening, their parents sat them down. Dad asked, “Did anything strange happen yesterday?”

Madison hesitated. Then, looking embarrassed, she spoke.

“I, uh… I yelled at Mindy for being a bad sister. And I wished she was never my sister. Then, I walked into the backyard and found this shiny blue marble. I picked it up and brought it inside. Maybe… the marble switched us?”

Her mother gasped. “That could be it! Go get it!”

Madison ran upstairs and retrieved the marble from her study table. Their father held it in his hands.

“Before you wish to switch back,” he said, “is there anything you want to say to each other?”

Madison turned to Mindy and confessed, “I’m sorry for what I said. I was just mad because Daniel and David were bugging me all afternoon. You really are a great sister.”

Mindy smiled and hugged her. Then, Madison cupped the marble in her hands. The moment she made her wish, the stone burst into smoke.

Coughing, Madison looked down at herself. “I’m back! It worked!”

The sisters hugged as their parents sighed in relief.

Published in Dawn, Young World, April 19th, 2025